labricoleuse | Recent Entries

They're almost done. This group of projects had such cool little details that i've got more closeups than full-length shots!

Closeup of faux embroidery on a coat by third-year grad Denise Chukhina.

Close-up of machine-embroidered plastron on a gown by third-year grad Corinne Hodges.

Rear view of pocket and vent on a jacket by second-year grad Erin Abbenante.

Plastron and sleeve/cuff detail on a bodice by second-year grad Katie Keener.

Mariner's cuff and pocket flap detail on a women's jacket by third-year grad Colleen Dobson.

Broader detail view of the women's jacket by third-year grad Colleen Dobson.

Left rear: pocket-hoops and gown by third-year grad Corinne Hodges.
Left foreground: fichu, bodice, skirt by second-year grad Katie Keener.
Right foreground: women's riding ensemble by third-year grad Colleen Dobson.

Left: jacket, waistcoat, breeches by third-year grad Denise Chukhina.
Center: jacket, waistcoat, breeches by second-year grad Erin Abbenante.
Right: pocket-hoops and gown by third-year grad Corinne Hodges.

Today i've got a great new interview to share, with milliner Maria Curcic of Le Chapeau Rouge.

Photographer: Judy Bandsmer
Model: Emily Mann
Hat, hair, and makeup: Maria Curcic

Q. How long have you been designing hats, and how did you get started?

A. I have been in the arts since the early 80’s, with fashion shows, producing my own shows and so on. My life circled around hats, design, fashion, and architecture. My mother was a seamstress and made a lot of our clothes--she taught me how to sew and the basics of sewing. She always had me in hats at a young age, and I wore them often in our outings in Paris. I really believe growing up in Paris influenced how I saw women accessorize.

Q. You work with a wide range of materials--felt, feathers, fabrics, straw, etc. Do you have a favorite and why?

A. My favorite materials are silks, satins and felt mostly, but really, my work is about wearable art. My pieces tend to reflect my knowledge of materials to create wearable forms. My work is multi-dimensional, so [I appreciate] materials that can be applied to these methods of millinery.

Q. Who are your influences in hat design?

A. I really loved the work of Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy and Louis Mariette to name a few. I love their whimsical styles and their dedicated life passion.

Q. Tell me about your store in Calgary, Le Chapeau Rouge, and how you shifted to wholesale.

A. I opened in 1994, knowing there was nothing like it at all in Calgary, or much in Canada [at all] for that matter. I was designing hats for a friend’s store in 1990, and she encouraged me to open my own store. I really wanted to push fashion-forward hats to women who wanted something that was not run-of-the-mill or mass-produced. Most of my clients wanted me to create something I would wear.

My store stocked many European designers such as Louise MacDonald and many others…I also carried a great line of men’s hats from Germany. Around that time, men were not even seen in hats other than baseball caps; the same went for women.

I had some great lines of my own which I produced for various retailers across Canada while running a store full time--thus began the wholesale aspect of my business.

Currently, I still sell wholesale (more of my unique art pieces) to boutiques as well as retail on eBay:
http://www.ebay.ca/usr/mariacurcic

I create custom designs with clients around the world. With easy access to the internet, these days it’s easy to sell abroad.

Q. Do you design seasonal style collections, or strictly one-of-a-kind pieces?

A. I design both seasonal and one-of-a-kind works.

Q. When it comes to designing, do you construct your hats based on concepts and drawings, or do you work sculpturally, letting the media determine the form?

A. A bit of both. I sometimes love to manipulate the materials, then I sketch out the idea and move forward with the concept. Sometimes it’s the other way around--I draw the hat, then look for the materials. Either way, both processes are rewarding!

Q. What's your favorite tool or piece of equipment in your millinery workroom?

A. My vintage blocks.

Q. What advice would you give readers considering a career in contemporary millinery?

A. Learn the basics of sewing, materials and how they work together. If you are serious about this trade, take a credited course in fashion/millinery design. Taking a few workshops here and there, that does not make you a milliner. Millinery takes time, creativity, and patience to master.

I studied Interior Design and majored in drawing in art school prior to millinery, so I am very familiar with various fibres, drafting, color theory and so on.

Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with me about your work, Maria! You can keep up with Maria's millinery on her Facebook page and website, and she's also shared a link to a video as well:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Le-Chapeau-Rouge/237140949667615
https://vimeo.com/124983126
http://www.mariacurcic.com

Moving ever closer to the end of the 18th century, period pattern class presented their post-cavalier yet pre-revolution era projects recently. There will only be one more of these this semester!

Left: women's look by second year grad Katie Keener
Center left: women's look by third year grad Corinne Hodges
Center right: men's look by third year grad Denise Chukhina
Right: men's look by second year grad Erin Abbenante

A better view of Erin's guy with research image.

Riding habit by third year grad Colleen Dobson

My dye class presented some of their projects today for the most recent unit, repetition techniques. This segment of the class covers a wide range of methods for creating surface designs on textiles involving repeat images, from screenprinting to blockprinting, stenciling to digital fabric printing. Check these out!

First year grad Max Hilsabeck converted a mosaic design into a stencil in order to create multicolor border print on a purchased tee-shirt.

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Second year grad Erin Abbenante screenprinted this "Treadle to the Metal" motif on...well, just about everything. (Pictured, tee and test print.)

Second year grad Katie Keener owned this antique woodblock and wanted to somehow incorporate it into her project--note the pattern loss in the stamped samples here, due to severe damage to the block itself. She cleaned up the impression of the stamped image and digitized it...

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...then she worked with Sallye Coyle of Good Harbor Bay Studios to carve a new block using a ShopBot CNC router. Pictured is the new block and two prints using it.

Then, she talked to the folks at the UNC Makerspace here on campus about 3D printing the block! At left is the actual block they printed (with residual ink from use) and at right are two test prints which were flawed experiments.

A comparison of test prints using the two blocks. Still some issues to work out with accurate registration on the 3D printed block, at right, but they both sure do make some great repetition-patterned fabrics, don't they?

Period pattern class projects were presented this past Friday, and i've snapped some photos of them on display in the hall outside the costume shop:

Left: Yellow satin gown by second-year grad Erin Abbenante
Center: Eggshell gown by third-year grad Colleen Dobson
Right: Navy gown with venice lace applique by third-year grad Denise Chukhina

A better view of Denise Chukhina's project.

Bodice by third-year grad Colleen Dobson. Check out the wave-blade slashes in the fabric!

Detail shot of Denise's embellishment and the research image she worked from for the pattern.

Left: Blue mens ensemble by third-year grad Corinne Hodges.
Right: Gold mens ensemble by second-year grad Katie Keener

Detail shot of Katie's paned sleeve structure.

My graduate students presented the next round of projects in dye class today, the focus of which is use of resist to create surface design on fabric. They decide upon a method, a fabric, and a dye to use, and must create a substantial length of fabric (the minimum requirement is 4 square feet, but most choose to do more surface area than that).

Take a look at what they created!

PRC Costume Technician Sam Kate Toney made this batik of a traditional tattoo design using soy and parrafin wax for her resist, and fiber-reactive cold-process dyes on a yard of cotton fabric.

Second-year grad Erin Abbenante made this batik of a nautical allover design using soy wax (and an anchor-shaped tjap!), using fiber-reactive cold-process dyes on a yard and a half of cotton fabric.

First-year grad Max Hilsabeck made this dress from an engineered batik of palm fronds, using fiber-reactive cold-process dyes on cotton fabric.

Second year grad Katie Keener used gutta as a resist to create this Bakst-inspired yardage with acid dyes on 2.5 yards of china silk.

One of the advantages of blogging about such a narrow focus as costume from a professional and academic perspective? The very, very rare occasion when something happens like this: Bloomsbury sent me a review copy of the new book Shoes: An Illustrated History, by Rebecca Shawcross.

And it's exciting, yes, to get such a fantastic free book in the mail, but i'll tell you this: i'd have bought it anyway. If all you want is a soundbite of a review, there it is. The book's great, buy it. If you like shoes, if you love shoes, if you dig costume history, if you enjoy footwear in terms of fashion, buy it. And i'm not just saying that because i got a free copy, i'm saying it because it's a great book, but i'm getting to why, and that takes more time (and words) than a soundbite.

Above: new Fluevogs!

Below: new shoe book!

First up, let me say that i'm well versed in what's out there in the way of books about shoes. Historical surveys, coffee-table photo books, little gift books with tons of pictures but barely any info. I either own them, owned but deaccessioned them, or check them out of the library each time i teach my shoe unit in Decorative Arts seminar. My usual beef with most shoe survey books produced in the late 20th century is that they pretty much have all the same shoes in them--you can expect to see the same exact images licensed from the same popular sources. So, if you're a shoe-book connoisseur, you could practically play bingo with a card of shoe pix from the Met and the Bata.

And sometimes, sure, that's because the shoes are iconic. It'd be strange to have a history of shoes with no images of the famous Ferragamo styles, or the Vivier comma heels, or a pair of wooden pattens or a Chinese lotus shoe. And this book, Shoes, does have those included. But, it has SO much more--so many other pairs of footwear that you just don't see in the majority of other books of this sort out there. Presumably this is partly because most of those books are drawing primarily on North American collections for the majority of their images, while this book's author, Rebecca Shawcross, is attached to the Northampton Museum's footwear collection from which she can draw for even more images outside the most commonly circulated images/pairs.

This book is beautifully put together and enormously readable/browsable--a great balance of full color images, historical illustrations & engravings, and meaningful yet not dense text. It could be a reference book in your workroom's library (as it will be for me), but it could just as easily be a coffee table book in your home. You could read it cover to cover and learn about shoes from 3500 BCE to the present, or you could dip in and out of it by era or subject. Shawcross gives equal weight to the progression of the history of footwear itself (construction, materials, innovations, styles) as she does to recurring iconic styles and innovations/innovators. She even approaches some footwear topics from a sociological perspective, like the phenomenon of concealed shoes within the walls of architecture from prior centuries.

I find the chapter sections on footwear trends and designers of the 1990s and 2000s to be of particular note, because most other books of this ilk were published IN those years, so they stop with 1980s footwear trends. This book actually addresses topics like the influence of the Spice Girls on the return of the platform, and the influence of sports celebrity branding on the athletic shoe industry (i.e., Air Jordans). The main beef i have with the book, really, is that the author makes no mention of some of the most innovative and influential brands and designers from that period--no John Fluevog, no Luichiny, no Irregular Choice. But, that's a small quibble in the scheme of things.

Ultimately, this is an exciting new book on a subject I adore, and i highly recommend it.

Hooray, another alumni interview! Recently I e-spoke with Adrienne Corral, MFA '14, about her gig working as a crafts artisan for Feld Entertainment. Feld produces costumes, props, and scenic elements for a whole range of different touring shows, from Disney on Ice and the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

Q. First up, what is your official title?

A. Costume Specialist : Crafts

Q. For a bit of background for the readers, would you describe the costume facilities at Feld--how many employees, what different positions there entail, specialty equipment the shop owns, etc?

A. The facilities here at Feld are pretty spectacular. We have seperate paints and dye rooms for crafts, as well as a draping station in the main room. The main room consists of 8 potential draping / first hand stations with a 4 × 8 table, an industrial and domestic machine. There are multiple cover stitch machines and sergers on a middle table. We've a tailor, two drapers and two first hands in the sewing room, though our manager often does show work as well.

We have two kind of special jobs here, a Disney Specialist and a Wardrobe Liason. The Disney S pecialist works on the of all the Disney characters (meaning Mickey and crew, not princesses). She works closely with Disney shops to ensure consistency with the parks. Our wardrobe liason is in charge of talking with and taking care of the needs of our 19 touring shows. He helps schedule refurbs, orders show laundry (think Equity underwear), and any other similar issue. There are often show visits involved, which means traveling out to wherever the show is, be that Chicago or Dubai or London.

Q. What is your background in the area of costume production, and how did you land the job at Feld?

I started sewing at a very young age, costumes in particular in high school. I attended FSU for theater and realized quickly that I had no great skill with or affinity for design. I worked at Utah Shakespeare Festival my first summer of graduate school with Ruth George, our Disney person. She was orginally hired to do my job as well as care of the Disney things. The summer after I finished my courses at UNC the job was split in two and she called me about it.

Q. What advice would you give to readers who aspire to work for a company like Feld?

A. Feld is very much a company that hires from the inside. Many of our office staff were performers or stage hands who moved to a sit-down job. We are constantly hiring for our tours (I think a total of 19 or 20 different shows) and at least one of our managers in the shop came off of a circus wardrobe head position.

Q. Can you talk about some of the projects you have worked on recently?

A lot of the projects I work on are refurbishing jobs. So I often am putting unitards on dress forms and trying to recreate the painting effects orginally put on there by Parsons-Meares or [Eric] Winterling's, or whomever made the garment. If not that its stripping and repainting latex prosthetic masks. I also have a very tight Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA) on my contract that makes it so I can't talk specifically about my work on Disney shows. But for the circus, I can. I do a TON of dye work during circus time. Lots of flesh tones and crazy rich colors. Our shop builds the clowns, so it can be hard to look at some of the yardage. I also play milliner for the clowns and make new hats for those clowns who require them. Circus is my favorite part of the year, even if we're working the craziest of hours.

Q. What is your favorite must-have tool or piece of equipment for the work you do, and why?

A. My airbrush. It's the best way to paint the majority of the masks and unitards I have to work on. It's a midrange Iwata, and though they can be a pain to maintain, they are what I use to paint with 90% of the time. Then I would have to say as an extension of that, our 90 gal stand-up air compressor really makes the job easy.

Q. Does Feld have any internship opportunities for those still in school and if so, can you talk a bit about what it involves and how readers might apply?

A. We're starting internships, though I believe they are limited to the University of South Florida - Manatee campus. We don't currently have any costume interns, but I hope that changes soon.

Q. I like to include one image, a stage or workroom shot of something recent or your favorite costume or whatever...

A. The image below is a shot over the top of our third rail of our three-level-tall stock (two stories). It's about the size of an indoor football field. I was on the sccissor lift, restocking.

Thanks, Adrienne! It's always exciting to hear about what our graduates are doing, and to learn about all the different careers out there for professional costume artists. To read more of these kinds of posts, check out the "Interviews" tag.

So, totally off-topic for this blog, but my main hobby is improvisational baking, and very rarely i share a recipe of mine on here, if it turns out so good that everybody at work asks for it. This one is so easy, it feels kinda dorky to even act like it was some feat of creativity to come up with it, but so many people wanted to know how to make it, i'm writing it down. Or typing it out.

We celebrated Pi(e) Day and everyone had to bring a pie to share. Mine was a recipe i made up: Pistachio Cream Pie. The event started at 4pm and it was gone, no lie, by 4:07 (a guy in the scene shop timed it). So, here is the recipe for it

Sorry, i forgot to take a perfectly staged picture of it beforehand. It was pale green. This picture is partly a joke, but partly so you can pin the recipe on Pinterest if you collect recipes that way. How about that vintage 80s tablecloth?!

Ingredients:

Pie crust (if you like to make your own, rock on, and i'll let you pick your fave recipe, but you can buy one if you are lazy)

10 oz tub of Cool Whip

2 1/4 cups half-and-half, light cream, or heavy/whipping cream

1/2 package pistachio pudding

shelled pistachios

I have yet to make a successful pie crust on my own, so i bought one at the store. It was of the graham cracker variety. In a bowl, whisk together the pudding, the cream, and 1/2 the tub of Cool Whip. The heavier the cream you use, the thicker the filling will get. So if you like a dense pie, go with heavy cream. I used half-and-half. Then stir two handfuls of pistachios in with a spoon, and pour the resulting mixture into the pie crust. Put it into the fridge overnight at least. I let mine go a day and a half. Right before you serve it, top the green pie with the rest of the plain Cool Whip and sprinkle with more pistachios.

It really was that easy.

Coming up this June is the Ten Year Anniversary of La Bricoleuse! I almost can't believe it myself, that i've been writing this blog through a whole decade of costume production, sharing projects and processes and the fruits of my and my students' labor, millinery and dyeing and masks and parasols and so much more.

In that time, i've worked on the production of costumes for Playmakers Repertory Company, the Utah Shakespeare Festival, the Carolina Ballet, the Public Theatre, Parsons-Meares Ltd., the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Shilling Shockers television show, Troika Entertainment, and more. Posts from this blog about that work have led to articles published in journals like Stage Directions and Theatre Design & Technology.

I've published Sticks In Petticoats: Parasol Manufacture for the Modern Costumer, the only book in print about restoring and recovering parasols. I've taught twenty classes at UNC-Chapel Hill to dozens of graduate students (and undergrads, too), and presented my work at regional and national conferences. Most of those students' work has been featured in this blog, and most of those presentations began as posts i made here about the work that we do.

Now, the backlinks to this blog are huge on costume-production-centric search strings, the visibility of the topic-specific posts is high, and the network of readers and commenters is gratifying to be part of. I've met so many of you at conferences and workshops and opening nights, and i always LOVE hearing how this blog has helped you solve a problem or choose a material for a project, or teach a student. And to think when i started

labricoleuse, i only wanted to keep a record what i saw as an underdocumented/undocumented field.

It has been a great decade, and I want to celebrate the anniversary to the fullest!

So i've already started brainstorming a whole bunch of ideas--some themed series of posts, some fun contests and giveaways, and even an actual real-life party. (Details TBA, and you're all invited!)

But the subject said "Contest/Giveaway"!

Right. I'd like to come up with a slogan for the anniversary, something fun and apt that i can use in press releases and on anniversary-related posts and event invitations, and this is where the contest comes in.

I'm asking for your help, and one winner will receive a package of random antique ribbons and trims, much in the same vein as the four winners of the last giveaway. Because frankly, i still have quite a bit left and i really enjoyed sharing the wealth.

Here's the deal:

You can enter by commenting (either here or on Facebook, or by tweeting at me) with a suggestion of an anniversary tagline. Two examples I thought up were "Hats Off to Ten Years of La Bricoleuse!" and "La Bricoleuse: Ten Years of Dyeing & Not Dead Yet!"

You have until a week from today--March 20--to enter, and you can enter as many times as you like.

I'm going to pick a winner, whatever entry I like best, and frankly, if i like one of my own slogans best, THEN i'll just choose a random winner from the people who've participated (because what's the fun in me winning a batch of ribbons and trims i already own?!).

And i guess if nobody participates, I'll see that i'm the only person who finds this idea fun. :)

So think about it, gimme your best suggestions, and hey, if you aren't good at this kind of thing, recommend the blog to a friend who is and let them come up with something. You could split the prize if they win!

And thank you ALL for reading, participating, asking questions, for however long you've been along for the ride!

I have to admit, i got a bit jealous with all the great results my students got out of their shibori project and it made me itchy to do some of my own experiments. Spring Break provided a great opportunity to step into the dyeshop while everyone was gone and explore.

Folded and clamped processes are perhaps my favorite to experiment with--i enjoy the mental origami of pattern-dyeing in this way. And, we had a HUGE donation of rayon slubbed-back satin donated, bolts of vintage fabric with a lovely weight and drape to it. My students had also saved leftover dye concentrate that they'd mixed up from an earlier fiber-reactive dye projects, so i decided to use up some of that before its shelf life expired, and test out how the vintage rayon would take to the shibori process.

At left, a "cube" of fabric which has been fan-folded first across the width and then down its length.
Each fold was pressed/steamed using the industrial iron at right.
One of the clamps is in the foreground, which i kept handy for size reference during the folding process.

Here's that block of fabric secured between the clamps with dye applied.
I used a yellow dye on the top half and a bronze dye on the bottom half.
These are fiber-reactive Pro MX dyes which process at room temperature.

Here's a couple more configurations with rectangular and triangular folding/clamping shapes.

And here's the results of that first trio: the first yellow/bronze piece is at left, the triangular one at center, and the rectangle at right. There's a 60" ruler at the top for size reference, and i've folded over the yardage so you can see how the dye took differently on the satin (lower) and the matte/slubbed (upper) sides of the fabric! These pieces are about 3 yards in length each.

I liked the results so much, i did two more, this time dyeing the base fabrics pink and blue before beginning the folding/clamping/overdyeing. This image also shows a dye migration that happened: the medallion shapes on the left were dyed using a green dye, and the yellow/blue components separated and migrated at different rates during the dye process, giving me these green-ringed gold shapes. Cool!

Here's all the pieces displayed on my work table in the studio.

Now, i just have to figure out what to do with them. Got any suggestions? :D

We have had some blizzards and ice storms in the past couple weeks which did wind up causing production delays for both our mainstage show and my grad students' projects. (It's hard to work on something when you can't leave the house to get to the facility to use the equipment to do the project...) So, the two remaining students completed their shibori projects and wow, what fantastic results!

Second year grad Erin Abbenante used a folding technique to create this beautiful china silk yardage.

Another view of the silk to better illustrate the pattern she achieved.

First year grad Emily Plonski did an engineered pattern for her shibori
to create this fantastic dress using a tied resist method.

Detail view of Emily's work to show the varigation/pattern better.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is conducting a WWI Centenary Project, a "year-long conversation" about the legacy of that conflict, 100 years down the line. This has manifested in a huge range of participation across many departments and facets of the university, from exhibits in our museums, talks and workshops and presentations, theatrical and musical performances from the time period, and so forth.

The Costume Archive is participating, too, with a current display of "armistice blouses" and WWI artifacts in the lobby of the Center for Dramatic Art. I got a few photos, which i'll apologize for the glare of the glass from the display case. Not sure how long these will be on view, but probably for the remainder of the semester.

( Blouses and other photos )

Costume Director Judy Adamson's period pattern class recently presented their half-drapes of the 1600s. Enjoy these shots i snapped of the forms displayed in the hallway outside our costume shop!

Left side: Second year graduate Katie Keener
Right side: Third year graduate Corinne Hodges

Left: Second year graduate Erin Abbenante
Center: Third year graduate Denise Chukina
Right: Third year graduate Colleen Dobson

Detail shot of the sleeve on Corinne Hodges' gown

Detail shot of the sleeve on Katie Keener's gown

Detail shot of the sleeve on Erin Abbenante's gown

Detail shot of the sleeve on Colleen Dobson's coat/doublet combo

We're working on a production of Ibsen's Enemy of the People right now at Playmakers Repertory Company, and i've had the occasion to do a distressing/aging project that some of y'all might enjoy.

Our production is set in the 1950s, and we've got a character whose very nice, new wool suit actually needs to look old and decrepit. The actor playing this character is one of our company actors, which means he's cast several times a year, and we have some go-to items for him which get used frequently--suits, shoes/boots, etc. Rather than wrecking a really good suit from our stock which we know fits him well and which would get future use, if it could be restored after this show, I'm using the Schmere line of products to do some reversible surface design.

Schmere makes a line of wax-based crayons and "smudge sticks" which have dry pigment suspended in them. You rub them on the costume, and they wash or dry-clean out. They're used a lot in the film industry, when a production might rent a HUGE number of costumes for a crowd scene and need them dirtied up, but not actually wrecked beyond restoration. For theatre, use of Schmere does mean that any treatment will need reapplication after each cleaning during the course of a run. For us, this means i'll need to "re-up" the Schmere at least two more times. Take a look:

Yes, they come in deodorant containers. Yes, one color is called sweat stains. Yes, that's funny.

schmere2

Would you believe all the highlights and lowlights and shading on this coat will disappear at the dry cleaners?

schmere3

Detail of streaky "sun-fading" and "sweat stain" on the coat back.

In the third year of graduate study, our students complete several capstone projects, one of which is the historical reproduction. For this project, they choose a garment from our collection of antique garments, the Costar Archive. They must study the garment closely and then reproduce it as closely as possible. Often the source garment is very fragile, oddly-sized, and not a garment which could or would be worn onstage. Our students reproduce the pattern of the source garment, but adjusted/altered to the measurements of a modern physique.

Third year graduate student Denise Chukhina has completed and photographed her historical reproduction project, a replica of this 1895-1905-ish velvet bodice. (You can read all about the garment itself at the link, and see several detail shots of its embellishments and design features.)

Left: original antique garment on custom pigeon-breasted display form.
Right: Denise Chukhina's reproduction, sized up to fit her own measurements.

Oblique view illustrating the "pouter pigeon" silhouette.
Denise elected to do her reproduction in navy instead of black like the original.

Denise's bodice incorporates velvet, silk chiffon, and satin;
it is trimmed in glass beads and hand-dyed braids and lace appliques.

Detail shot of the hand-beaded collar and some of the lace appliques.

In addition to the reproduction itself, the students write a research paper about the garment, analyzing its construction and relating any known information about its provenance. They also digitize their patterns. Both of these documents will then be uploaded to the Costar site after the student's work has been graded and the degree conferred. So, if you like this bodice, check back in a few months and you can grab the pattern for it from Costar!

We've finished the first part of the graduate level dye class i teach, in which we cover the science portion of the subject (different classes of dyes and which fibers they work on, how the processes differ, how to discharge dyes/"color remove," etc.). We're now moving into the section that students usually find more fun, because it covers the application of that knowledge base in the creation of artistically conceived surface design effects. The first project of this section is shibori.

We had a bit of a setback in the form of an ice storm that shut down the university for a day and a half, which put a couple of my students behind on their project, but i do have three images to share of their work. I require them to produce at least two yards of fabric for this project, the logic being that, whenever i am asked to do a shibori effect on fabric by a costume designer, it's in the service of yardage creation--generating pattern on fabric which a draper will then make into a dress or a skirt or a kimono or something.

PRC's costume technician Sam Kate Toney created this snowflakey-looking cotton yardage using a folding and stitching technique and fiber-reactive dye.

First-year grad student Max Hilsabeck produced this organic pattern in three shades of green on four yards of china silk by employing a pole-wrapping (arashi) technique and acid dyes.

Second-year graduate student Katie Keener also used the pole-wrapping technique with acid dyes on the above two yards of china silk, but she accordion-pleated her fabric before wrapping it to achieve this more geometric mirrored pattern.

Here's a view of Sam Kate's yardage spread out on a work table,
for a better perspective on the scale of these pieces.

Super thrilled to return to my (very sporadic) interview series with this fantastic email-chat I recently conducted with costumer Leah Pelz.

In addition to being a recent alumna of the UNC-Chapel Hill Costume Production MFA program (in which i teach) and the inaugural winner of the Barbara Matera Award for Costume Making, Leah is now based in NYC where she works as a first hand for the renowned production house Tricorne LLC, as well as working as a wardrobe swing for the long-running Broadway show, The Lion King.

[FYI: Barbara Matera was a legendary costumiere who ran her NYC shop, Barbara Matera Ltd., for many years, making clothes for theatre, ballet, opera, film, and more. USITT's award in her name was founded by her friend, assistant, and colleague, Judy Adamson, as a tribute to Matera, who passed away in 2001.]

Read on to find out what Leah has to share about these two super-cool jobs of hers!

labricoleuse: For a bit of background for the readers, would you describe the Tricorne shop or studio space--how many employees, what different positions there entail, specialty equipment the shop owns, etc?

LP: There are about 40 employees at Tricorne. Each of the 4-5 drapers, including the owner, Kathy Marshall, have up to three first hands, and the operators, tailors, hand finishers, and beaders are frequently shared amongst the drapers. We have one craft artisan, a shopper, and a few managerial positions.

As for specialty equipment, we have a small dye space, heat press, and ample beading frames.

labricoleuse: What is your background in the area of costume production, and how did you land the job at Tricorne?

LP: I minored in Theatre Arts at Illinois Wesleyan University and went on to work as an overhire stitcher at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. One of the drapers there inspired me to pursue my MFA in Costume Production from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which I completed in 2014.

I moved to New York City and interviewed at Tricorne and several other shops right away. Shortly thereafter, Tricorne contacted me about an opening in their shop. The dressmaking skills I acquired at UNC are the same as those used at Tricorne, and my mentor, Judy Adamson, knows Kathy [Marshall] well from the years they worked together in New York at Barbara Matera's.

[Ed. note: Also, in undergrad, Leah majored in...uh, something to do with political science and Slavic languages. All i'm certain of is that she can curse in Hungarian!]

labricoleuse: What advice would you give to readers who aspire to work in Broadway costume production?

LP: A good work ethic and an eagerness to learn can go a long way. Learn to speak confidently about your work and present yourself professionally not only while interviewing, but also in your day to day operations. And expect to juggle many projects at once!

labricoleuse: Can you talk about some of the projects you have worked on recently with Tricorne?

LP: Tricorne's primary niche is dressmaking for leading ladies and chorus women. Lately the entire shop has been working on a seemingly endless number of Romantic tutus and ballet bodices for Sleeping Beauty at the American Ballet Theatre. We've also been very busy with On the Twentieth Century, a Las Vegas show called Showstoppers, the London production of Beautiful, and Aladdin Tokyo.

Some of our biggest recurring projects include Glinda and many of the Emerald City ensemble costumes for Wicked, and a variety of pieces for Matilda, Mamma Mia, Motown, and Kinky Boots.

labricoleuse: What is your favorite must-have tool in your work kit and why?

LP: For practical reasons, my must-have tool would be a good chalky piece of white tracing paper and my shears. My favorite tool, however, is a beautiful wooden handled seam ripper given to me by a friend and educator from graduate school because it gets the job done in style! [Full disclosure: I gave Leah that seam ripper. And she's right, it's really sweet!]

labricoleuse: Does Tricorne have any internship opportunities for those still in school and if so, can you talk a bit about what it involves and how readers might apply?

LP: Tricorne does not have any such program in place.

labricoleuse: You also work as a wardrobe swing for The Lion King. Can you describe what that means for our readers?

LP: I'm one of a handful of substitute dressers, or swings, that the wardrobe head calls upon if one of the regular dressers is unable to work. The staff dressers have their designated track, or list of cues, that they complete for every performance. Some of the tracks are assigned primarily to dressing or tracking items for male or female ensemble members, while others work mostly with principal characters. As a swing, I have gone through training to learn six of the 16 tracks, and am contacted fairly regularly to fill in for any of them as needed, which sometimes is weeks in advance and sometimes with no time to spare!

labricoleuse: Thanks to you and the folks at Tricorne for sharing all of this great info, and also these sweet behind-the-scenes shots of those Sleeping Beauty tutus! Thanks, Leah, and best of luck moving forward with all your amazing projects!

Nearly complete! A process shot of American Ballet Theatre's
Sleeping Beauty, designed by Richard Hudson

Not as complete...another process shot of American Ballet Theatre's
Sleeping Beauty, designed by Richard Hudson

Leah called this "the Tutu Corral"--all the tutus waiting to ship out in one of Tricorne's fitting rooms!

The millinery trim giveaway has closed, and winners have been chosen by the magic randomizer! (By which i mean, the computerized randomizer.)

I have to admit, it has been so exciting this past week seeing all the new "likes" coming in from milliners and craftspeople whose work is new to me! So many interesting Etsy shops and blogs and retailers and designers and costume students and....i could just keep going.

But, without further ado, our four winners are:

Kelly Formaldehyde of MsFormaldehyde

Brenda Grantland of Hatatorium and the Hatatorium Emporium

Dannielle Kukar of FeatherHeart

Jordana Robinson of Mossbadger Fashion Design

Congratulations, y'all, and I will get these packed up and sent out, hopefully by the end of the week.

Thank you so much to all of you who entered, and I hope you hang around as part of the La Bricoleuse readership! Plus, I had such a fantastic response to this that I've got THREE more awesome giveaway ideas percolating, details TBA once i get this one all packed up and shipped out!

First up, a reminder that there are two more days to enter the giveaway for millinery trims! February 2nd is the last day you can enter, and i'll announce winners ASAP. But for now, hats and more hats...

So, per my post the other day about the donation of hatboxes and hats that our loan supervisor brought by my office, here are a few images of the hats that were in those fantastic packages!

Glamorous flat felt 1940s hat by Vogue Hats--this is the one that was in that black floral box.

Side view of same. The trim is a metallic-beaded cord and a seed-bead shield/crest.
The hat is made from three pieces of flat felt seamed and tucked to create this shape.

Mink tilt "golf cap"

Glamorous mink earflap toque. Everyone wants this one in this current weather!

Ivory melusine cloche with wide wool felt band and tortoiseshell buckle.

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Page Summary

period pattern class projects
Interview: Maria Curcic of Le Chapeau Rouge!
period pattern class projects
Dye class: Repetition
Period pattern class grows quite cavalier...
Dye class: Resist projects!
Book review: SHOES: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY by Rebecca Shawcross
Alumni interview: Adrienne Corral, Crafts Specialist at Feld Entertainment
Recipe (off-topic): Easy Icebox Pistachio Cream Pie
Ten Year Anniversary Contest/Giveaway
Shibori experiments: folded pattern
Dye class: More shibori projects
Armistice Blouse exhibit, Center for Dramatic Art, UNC-Chapel Hill
Period pattern moving forward in history: 1600s!
Reversible aging with Schmere products
Historical reproduction: 1890s bodice by Denise Chukhina
Dye class: Shibori projects
Interview: Leah Pelz, First Hand at Tricorne, NYC
Millinery Trim Giveaway winners announced!
Vintage hats from the hatboxes...

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La Bricoleuse

costume craft artisanship

Recent Entries

period pattern class projects

Interview: Maria Curcic of Le Chapeau Rouge!

period pattern class projects

Dye class: Repetition

Period pattern class grows quite cavalier...

Dye class: Resist projects!

Book review: SHOES: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY by Rebecca Shawcross

Alumni interview: Adrienne Corral, Crafts Specialist at Feld Entertainment

Recipe (off-topic): Easy Icebox Pistachio Cream Pie

Ten Year Anniversary Contest/Giveaway

Shibori experiments: folded pattern

Dye class: More shibori projects

Armistice Blouse exhibit, Center for Dramatic Art, UNC-Chapel Hill

Period pattern moving forward in history: 1600s!

Reversible aging with Schmere products

Historical reproduction: 1890s bodice by Denise Chukhina

Dye class: Shibori projects

Interview: Leah Pelz, First Hand at Tricorne, NYC

Millinery Trim Giveaway winners announced!

Vintage hats from the hatboxes...